It is well known to serially dispense folded sheet products such as paper napkins from a stack of such products. Such dispensers can employ followers or simply be gravity fed, the latter approach generally being the lowest cost and least complex.
In the case of gravity-fed dispensers for paper napkins and the like, the products are stacked in a housing having a dispenser element or nose piece of some nature attached to the lower end of the housing and defining an opening through which the products are dispensed in a serial fashion, often merely by manual grasping and removal of the products by a consumer at the opening.
It will be appreciated that dispensing of the lowermost napkin or other folded sheet product can be inhibited by frictional forces exerted thereon by the rest of the stack. That is, the lowermost folded sheet product supports the rest of the stack. The higher the stack, the greater the frictional forces between the lowermost folded sheet product and the folded sheet product immediately adjacent thereto. Ripping and tearing of the napkin or other folded sheet product being dispensed is fairly common, particularly when the stack itself is quite long and the lowermost folded sheet product bears its entire weight.
Often, the dispenser elements of gravity-fed paper napkins and other similar dispensers are disposed essentially horizontally, meaning of course that the paper napkin or other folded sheet product being dispensed bears the full load of the stack of which it is a part. Such disposition of the dispenser element and its dispensing outlet or opening also means that the consumer may have difficulty accessing and withdrawing the lowermost paper napkin or the like.
The aforesaid difficulties found in prior art dispensers are often aggravated by the fact that the products being dispensed, such as paper napkins, are of non-uniform thickness due to the particular fold utilized in their construction. Not only can this cause uneven frictional engagement between adjacent folded sheet products, the fact that the folded sheet products are conventionally stacked in a dispenser with corresponding portions thereof in alignment means that the storage capacity of the dispenser housing is not effectively utilized. That is, a stack of such folded sheet products will tend to be higher at one side thereof than the other due to the non-uniform thickness of each individual product. To accommodate a straight, vertically disposed stack, the dispenser housing must be as high as the highest stack side.